


now i shall offer this song

by laskaris



Series: would it be enough to go by [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Alternate Universe, Au Ra Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), F/M, Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers Spoilers, M/M, Miqo'te Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Multi, Multiple Warriors of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Specific Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Suicidal Thoughts, Worldbuilding, song magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2021-02-08 13:41:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21476935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laskaris/pseuds/laskaris
Summary: o hallowed wish of my heart/i want to protect you, my precious onesA song offered in four parts.
Relationships: G'raha Tia | Crystal Exarch/Warrior of Light
Series: would it be enough to go by [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1548076
Comments: 14
Kudos: 49





	1. o light give strength unto my weak heart;

**Author's Note:**

> The WoL/G'raha ship will be appearing starting in chapter 2. chapter 1 is just worldbuilding for the Weird Shit I'm doing with G'raha and being bound to the Tower. 
> 
> the "major character death" warning tag only applies to chapter 1.

Salina is dying, moment by moment, her body slowly slipping into quiescence, no matter how Desch shakes her awake at increasingly frequent intervals, forces precious water and sips of weak broth down her throat despite her weak protests that he needed it more, should eat. She tries to stay awake, for his sake, tries not to drift off against his shoulder as violent aftershocks tear the land open anew, but she knows the truth in her bones that he will not face and smiles behind her cloak's hood for him, just so he will not lose hope. He has nothing else save her and hope, now that the world has ended, and she would not take it away from him before there is no other choice, before she has something left to give him in her place.

_(once, just once, she wakes before him, to a sky choked by stone, and watches him sleep, fitfully, and rests her hands over his, twines her blue crystal fingers in his. Both their hands are small, he is barely taller than she, but she can feel the strength in them, even with his fingers lax in sleep._

_Please, she prays to the Mothercrystal, silent and as steady as she had once believed bedrock to be, please. Please, when I am gone, please let him keep moving forward. Please let him live for himself.)_

She has always been the least of the Allagan princesses, a fragile hothouse flower from the moment she was born, her life bound to the Tower to save it. Too unimportant for the technologists to open her up on the genetic level, to unbreak what was broken, but too important to simply let die. An experiment all on her own, Amon had laughed, to see whether this was even possible, to see what would happen. _(and now the little flower is eternal)_. A fragile girl with a crystallizing heart, who had almost never left her garden: no Doga or Unei, brave and clever and bold, whose control over the tower was effortless, who knew what they wanted and how to go about it and could travel as they will. Who were trying, trying so hard to find, to make, some kind of safeguard against the rot, the madness, at the heart of the empire.

But Doga and Unei, beloved and brave, had not survived the Calamity. Nor had any of the rest of her family: buried with the Crystal Tower, buried and gone. Only she remained - weak, ill, dying- , and only because Desch had taken her out of her garden the morning of the Calamity. Taken her to see different flowers, rare flowers, even though she should have been in the Tower, too, but she'd wanted to see him smile. So they'd snuck out, and then the whole world had come apart, in an instant-

Their survival had only been due to chance, but without the tower's light, she is dying, slowly but surely. Her hands tremble, when Desch isn't looking, another symptom of how her body is breaking down: soon, she will not be able to hide it anymore, even with her hands buried in the thick folds of her cloak. How long after that will she last, before everything fades into silence and light? Her life, ultimately, has come to very little: she does not want her death to be the same. _(But what can she do, one girl with no value?_) Doga and Unei would have thought of something they could have done already, surely. But she is no Doga, no Unei, and she is painfully, keenly aware of her lack, of her inadequacies, of her limitations. 

_(another night, she starts coughing up blood and buries her face in her cloak to muffle the sound. black hides the stains well enough. _

_soon enough she will not be able to hide it anymore.) _

Soon enough is too soon, as it turns out, especially with the pain in Desch's eyes as he watches her cough up blood. That there is nothing, nothing, nothing he can do for her. They read stories together, when they were small children, a sickly princess and a frightened boy who would never go home, so many stories, but the one she remembers most is the boy from the sea who fell in love and died and turned to seafoam because love was not enough to save him. It's something she knows intimately, that love sometimes isn't enough to save you, and hates the fact that Desch has to learn this way, has to understand, because while he knows, he still _hoped_, at least when it came to her. 

_I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. _

There are so many things that Salina is sorry for, and if she starts apologizing, she will never stop. She is sorry that she is a burden and sorry that Desch has to watch her die, slow and lingering, and sorry that she does not know what to do to make her lingering death into something of value, rather than come to as little as her life and sorry that she did nothing, nothing at all, to stop this. _(she is not the only one, but she is the only one left alive)_. 

She could have stopped this, couldn't she? Over the course of her life, she'd done very little with the Tower outside of her garden _(her bower, her cage)_, the least of the Allagan princesses who had the blood in full measure but no _purpose. _The one thing that binding her to the Tower had given her, besides life and crystal crawling slowly up her skin, sinking into her body, was control over it that theoretically outstripped that of any of her relatives. Not in any practical way, of course - otherwise _someone_ would have forced her to weaponize it _(and her mind recoils at the possibilities at how they could have, that someone could have, would have, tortured Desch to make her sing) _ but the potential was there, in her songs, in her emotions, to bend the Tower to accomplish miracles no one else could. 

If she'd been there, at the end, maybe, maybe, maybe, she could have wrested control, thrown the Tower between worlds with a song- 

_(her heart knows the truth that her mind will not face - that her songs would not work without the emotion to back them. that if she did not feel strongly enough, that it did not matter how many songs she sang, that the Tower would never have responded to her. _

_but it is easier to blame herself, than accept the harder truth-) _

Salina finally understands what she has to do, one night. They've stopped for their few hours of rest in what was once yet another garden, one of the many planted across the empire's lands to nourish its people both body and soul long before her time, when the empire still cared to look inward at the people already cradled within its lands rather than outward at what had escaped their grasp. Desch insists on keeping her even closer - as if he realizes, down deep, what he refuses to acknowledge with his words or with his tongue and cradles her close with her head in his lap. She's mostly drifted off, despite the bone-deep pain, and the ever-present shaking, and the cold, when she hears voices. More refugees, then, who sought refuge here like them, with no other choices and nowhere else to go - and she can feel Desch's tension, even mostly asleep as she is. 

"Your girl?" a voice asks, after some time has passed, raspy and worn. A old woman, she guesses, and she feels rather than sees Desch nod, in the brief motion of his body, just before he pulls her hood even further over her face. Trying to hide the telltale red eyes and the blue streak of crystal across her face - even if most people would not have heard of Salina, the least among the Allagan princesses, the red eyes would certainly give her away as Allagan royalty. She'd had nothing to do with causing the Calamity except her inaction, but easy enough to blame all their misfortunes on her regardless, and she does not want more trouble for Desch than she already causes him. "...her breathing sounds wrong." the woman says, quietly, after a moment. "Like there's something in her lungs." 

"She's...ill." Desch says, carefully. 

"...ah." the old woman sighs. "It's spreading." 

The earthquakes at the end of the world had killed many, quickly, but still more die to the slower deaths that follow in their wake. Hunger and cold and disease. 

"Once, I was a healer." the woman continues, quiet. "Though there is little enough I can do for your girl, now. The last of my medicines ran out, some time ago." 

For a moment, there is silence. Desch's hand is tight - too tight- on her arm for a moment, before he forces his grip to slacken. 

"Is there any advice you can give me?" he asks, his voice low and desperate. "Any at all?" 

"...treasure her, for what time you have left." their fellow refugee says, and the pained little sob Desch makes hurts more than just the physical pain. Salina would have done almost anything to spare him this. "There's nowhere you can even take her. You might as well just stay here." 

Desch says something, even quieter, a murmuring of words that she cannot quite make out. Salina is so very, very tired, and needs to rest. Sleep, for now, but soon. too soon. 

. "Ah, I wish I could give you better news, boy." the woman says, sighing. "...I am old enough to remember when the Tower was a beacon of hope, rather than despair, and then now nothing at all. But hope is in short supply." 

The conversation goes on, quiet, unhappy, but Salina cannot make out the words as the tide of sleep rises up to claim her. 

_A beacon of hope, _Salina thinks, vaguely, as she opens her eyes to the stone-choked dawn. The idea of the Crystal Tower as a beacon of hope instead of despair, cradling and protecting instead of being used to destroy and conquer, is a beautiful one - and perhaps the way it should have been, instead of the nightmare it became. A beautiful dream, but how to accomplish such a thing? Her lifetime, of course, is useless as a measure, measured as it is in only days, but this task is beyond Desch's lifespan as well. And his children, and their children, and their children's as well, at least. The Tower lies buried and dormant far beneath the earth - but someday it will emerge back into the light again. 

And someday, someone will figure out how to open it and release whatever still remains inside. Someone needs to be there to close it or control the Tower, rather than leaving it up to the vagaries of chance - but only someone who bears royal blood can control the Tower. And that is where she finds herself stuck: her family is all dead, and she is the last that remains. The last that bears the blood of the Tower, the last that could control it, if it wasn't buried thousands of malms underground. But her life is measured in only days, at best, no matter how Desch fights to keep her alive - and her bloodline will die with her. Even if she could live long enough, she cannot bear children, bound as she is to the Tower. 

She knows how to pass her blood to another, of course she does, but this, too, is where she is stuck. There were machines to do it, of course, complicated technological procedures for the aetheric transfusion, steps she can recite from rote, childhood lessons, but she doesn't have access to any of those. Not now, not after the end of the world, this Calamity, all buried or broken, too fragile to endure the shattering of the earth. After a moment, she draws her knees up to her chest, her crystal bones protesting at the motion, and simply _listens. _ Listens past the earth, the cracking, the sounds of shattering stone and a slow dying. Salina's heart is connected to the heart of the Tower, beat by beat, _(until it stops) _and she listens for its silence. Even in dormancy, even buried so far underground, she can hear it, silent and silent and _silent, _and she closes her eyes and sings a single questioning, crystalline note, reaching for its heart, trying to make it beat, even if only for a moment. 

A sudden wave of pain and weakness washes over her - _too much, too much, too much_\- and Salina almost falls in on herself. She could not do this were she not what she was, if her heart and her life were not connected to the very heart of the Crystal Tower, but she knows the price. She knows the price, one that she already is paying, and she smiles through iron blood: all she'd had to offer all along were her songs, even before the Calamity, songs that could stir the Tower to miracles even her relatives could not force it to accomplish. They hadn't wanted those songs - too uncontrolled, too dependent on her emotions, impossible miracles mean nothing if they cannot be replicated - before, but now she is dying, and impossible miracles are all she has to ensure her legacy will go on. She knows what she has to do, but knowing what she has to do and accepting the inescapable fact of her death does not mean that she is not afraid. She is willing to die _(and yet unwilling)_, has accepted that she will, but is still afraid. _(Selfish, isn't it, when so many have already died?)_

Salina closes her eyes for a short time, does not wake Desch, who is asleep, for once, instead of fitfully dozing. Lets him have what little comfort he can, selfishly lets herself rest in the circle of his arms, with his red tail wound around her waist. They could never have done this, pre-Calamity, with their roles as princess and guard ground into them, not lovers and never lovers until the earth broke and the sky fell in, but even this space, this moment, is fleeting. There's so many things she's sorry for, so many regrets that she will take with her, of all the things she could have and should have and did not do, but in this moment, she thinks of regret and love and the lingering hope that someday, somehow, he will let her go. 

_(there is nothing she can give Desch now save her love, however little that is worth, and another purpose. give him her love and her blood and her memories but not her, never her, alive in his arms. please keep moving forward. please live for yourself, now. _

_maybe the last is an impossible wish, too, as impossible as living with him, of growing old, of building a new world, a new life, cradled in the ruins of the old. _

_but maybe, just maybe, him living would be enough-)_

"Desch?" she calls for him, at last, her voice bone-tired and fraying. 

"I'm here," he says, and her heart aches. 

"I need you to do something for me," she continues. "It's important." 

"Of course," he says, without hesitation, his devotion bone-deep. "Anything. Ask of me anything." 

"Anything?" she murmurs, tiredly. He will not like what she asks of him, and - 

"Anything." he confirms, blue-green eyes narrowing. "...is something wrong?" 

"...I want to transfer my blood to you." she says, quietly, and he freezes, immediately. "The Tower might be buried and gone for now, but someday, it will come back into the light." 

"...how? Why?" Desch asks, and his left ear twitches sharply. 

"It's the only way, Desch." she says, soft and tired and resigned. "You are the only one I would entrust with this. You and your descendants." 

Desch is already shaking his head desperately, eyes firmly closed. 

"Please," she murmurs, and rests her trembling hand against the deceptively delicate line of his jaw, cradles his face in her fingers, the crystal intensely blue against his pale skin. Watches his ears flatten and his tail droop and hates what she is doing to him but sees no other way. "Please." 

After a moment, his face falls, as a keening sob tears its way free of his throat. 

"If I could stay with you, I would." she says. There are so many things that she yearns for and will never have, cannot ever have. But she is thankful, at least, to have had Desch for these years, almost her entire life as far back as she could remember, and she is thankful that he is with her now, even though it's selfish. "And I am sorry that I cannot." 

He buries his head in her shoulder with a broken little sob, warm arms wrapped tightly around her, and Salina lets him cry for both of them and holds him close. Lets him cry for as long as he needs to, lets him tremble in her arms. Her tears, when she still could cry, were crystal, not water, and she has been unable to weep since even before the sky fell in. 

"What do you need me to do?" he finally asks, his voice hoarse with tears, blue-green eyes red-rimmed.

"Be here with me." she says, simply. "Carry my wish into the future. Pass our legacy down to your descendants." 

Desch closes his eyes, tightly, and another broken, choked sob tears itself free, his deceptively slight frame trembling. "As you wish," he says, at last, and twines his fingers with hers. "Make me the vessel for your hope." 

Salina does not know what to say, for a moment. _Thank you_ or _I love you_ or any other words that come immediately to mind seem almost cheap, could never capture the intensity of what she feels. _Thank you for saving me, twice._ "I have only ever sung for you," she says, finally, because that is the truth, the truest thing she could have said. She has only, rarely, sung, despite - _because - _of the power in her songs, in her voice, and what few songs she crafted were for him. She would have sung down the Tower itself, if she must, could have thrown herself and it between worlds to save him. 

Instead, she begins to sing, reaching out to the silent, dormant heart of the Crystal Tower for one last time, and ignores the pain and weakness that washes over her. Sings with only her own voice, frail and weak, but her own voice and her own heart are all that she needs. Sings more than a single crystalline note, offers it her voice and her determination and her love and her life to make the Tower's heart beat, one last time, puts everything she feels and hopes into her melody, gives over everything she has and everything she is and everything she feels and everything she possibly has to give. Her love and her wish and her desire that someday, someday, _someday-_

Desch's hand is warm and soft on her face, sword-callused fingers resting on her cheek with an infinity of gentleness. His arms are steady around her, even as she can feel that he's crying again, and she can see the blue-green of his eyes begin to bleed red. She thinks he's saying something through his sobs, but she cannot hear him, only see his lips moving, but even that is lost as her vision goes, too, and last of all, touch, as everything fades to silence and light.

_(she dies with a song on her lips and a song in her heart and the hope that someday, someday, _someday-_)_


	2. in exchange for the sacrifice of my body

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _For your sake, I will be happy to become a song._

By now, Thya'a and Sarangerel have begun ascending Mt. Gulg, fighting their way through Vauthry's sin eaters. The Crystal Exarch has sung them as safe and well as he could, all this time since he had finally managed to summon them to the First, but there is a limit to what those lesser magics and brief hidden lullabies can do. There is only so much that can be done, and against the Light that strains against their increasingly-fragile bodies, those little melodies wound with crystal and artifice could only grant brief surcease of pain. Only one path, one choice, one song, that remains to him, the path he had always known that he must take, even before his journey back in time and across the rift. Every moment he has been able to spend with them, to see his friends _(his beloveds)_ alive and alive instead of horribly dead in the future that he had come from, dead and gone and the world fallen into darkness while he was still lost in years dreaming was a gift beyond measure, and he is grateful to have had it, for even the all-too-brief moments he's been able to share with them, even hidden under his ever-present, unmoving cowl. 

_(With any luck, they will never know his name, his face, who he is. Sarangerel has her suspicions, of course she does, but he hopes they will never be confirmed. He hopes they have forgotten the sound of his voice in the years since they parted, memories fading over time, like the text from an old, old, old book, ink faded and washed away by nothing more and nothing less than time's inexorable flow. His face, his voice, his memory. Gone, all gone._

_It would be the kindest thing, in the end, the only kindness in this.)_

It was a selfish thing he'd done, by the sea, that drawn-out moment by their sides. _What will you do, after this? _ There were a hundred and more answers he could have given - he'd rehearsed them, his heart beating like a terrified, trapped bird in his chest, once he'd realized that the two of them would _ask_ questions of himself of them, not content with the mystery and intent in their own ways of trying to see the man behind the cowl. A hundred answers that were not really answers, but would be enough, enough to be adequate in the moment and he had hoped that there would be no questions left after he was gone, simply fade into nothing and irreverence. 

But in that moment, he gives none of those answers, none of those carefully rehearsed, fragile lies. His heart, at the very end, is selfish, more selfish than he wishes he was - a hundred years of living for a single purpose, of distilling his entire existence down to a single point, trying to burn as much of _himself_ out in favor of simply being a vessel for the collective wish of generations and the song that will see that wish fulfilled and the hundred years of love and loss always in his heart, and _still_ he hadn't quite managed it, hadn't managed to make himself entirely self-less- and he, at the end, wants to be seen, even if only a little. Even if only through glass, sideways. A hundred years of love and longing and loss almost laid bare, with the thinnest of veils to conceal himself and who he speaks of, though one last lie even at that end hangs between them, hangs over even that truth. 

He has no future. There will be no 'after', as much as his selfish heart is afraid, at the end, to die, wants just a little more time with them, just a little more, just a little more. He had a hundred years to accept his fate, to embrace it, and yet he is still afraid, even though he might have hoped to walk to his death unafraid and with no regrets weighing him down. The things he wants are three, though two are one in the same, entwined, but the third can never be: he wants Thya'a and Saran to be alive, for their worlds to be saved, and to live by their side, but the third will not, cannot, ever be even a mote of a possibility in eternity's eye for the first two to come to pass. Impossible dreams, impossible wishes, and even as much of a fragment of his slowly crystallizing heart years for an impossibility, he will not _(will never)_ waver from the path he has chosen to walk, the only path that he could. Like a maiden to the altar or to the pyre, it ends in sacrifice. Every impossible wish, every impossible miracle, has a price, and this price he willingly chooses to pay. 

_(They will be saved, and well, and happy, and that is more than enough. more than enough when he has asked for so much already. It is enough that they live, enough that he has gotten the chance to see them again, to love them. More than he could ever ask.)_

It's almost time. Slowly, he pushes himself up, leaning more on his staff than he likes, but his exhaustion is bone-deep, and his hands almost tremble on his staff for a moment. He'd tried to conserve his energy and only perform the most necessary of tasks, had forced himself to rest in order to have just enough left to make it up the mountain for this last task, but his body was even more frail, this far from the Tower, than he'd thought. Frustrating, that his body fails him, just when he needs it most, _(even if it isn't truly his anymore)_, but there isn't much time left. Not much time, he just has to give everything he has left, and then he can rest. Briefly, very briefly, he runs through half-forgotten vocalises, warming his voice up, just enough, just enough, just enough for what he'll need when he reaches them. And then he begins to climb, one foot in front of the other, one foot in front of the other, one foot in front of the other. 

Each step is like walking on glass, on knives, and always has since he connected his heart to the Tower's heart. The further he goes the more his body weakens, the more it hurts to walk, step by step, and for a moment, for a moment, he remembers an old story. From his childhood, scraping at scraps of any Allagan story or Allagan fairy story he could find, and from Salina's memories, carried in his blood and his heart and his mind, the old story about the boy from the sea who fell in love with a man and died and turned to seafoam because love wasn't enough to save him. Except that isn't how the story goes, or it's not how he chooses to remember it, at the last. It wasn't that love wasn't enough to save him - it was that he chose to die, to sacrifice himself, for the sake of the man he loved. Chose to die for love. 

Step by step. Step by step. The moments of his life, his too-long life, are drawing to a close. Time is as short as life is limited, and he tries to hurry, forces himself to move as fast as he can. Forces himself to ignore the blackness creeping up his vision, from pain and weakness, keeps climbing. Step by step. Step by step. Past the monuments of bone and blood, salve to Vauthry's petty pride, up and up and up, following in the wake of the path that Sarangerel and Thya'a had already carved. Step by step.

All he has left to do is one more thing. Just one more. The easiest of all, compared to the path that the two Warriors of Light have already walked and will continue to walk. 

All he has to do is sing, then die. 

~~~ 

Halfway up the final stairs, the sound of Sarangerel screaming - no, _roaring - _in pain is loud in his ears and the Exarch runs faster, forces his uncooperative body to _cooperate_ this last time entirely through strength of will, shoves open the heavy doors and prays to heaven, prays that the air of heaven hear him - _that any god , if there is any god in heaven, hear him_ \- that he is not too late. Breaking glass and the echo of shattering souls and as he crosses the floor, his eyes are fixed alone on the two fallen on the floor, half-curled in on each other, as if trying to protect each other, soothe each other, through what is happening to them. Sarangerel thrashes in agony, roaring at the top of her lungs, while Thya'a is silent, too silent, save for broken gasps of desperate air. 

He wants to soothe them desperately - it will be alright, he wants to promise, you will live, everything will be well and everything will be well - but he has his part to play. A thin charade, at the end, between his own subpar lying skills and the fact that the moment he starts singing, the lie will be up, but he tries to lie anyway. Balm to their hearts, however temporary, to try to make them angry enough to not grieve as he taps his staff against the floor to raise a barrier just before he begins to draw the Light from them. Takes a breath, hums a single pure crystalline note, and reaches for the heart of the Tower: even here, it responds, stirs to life. Offers it his voice and his love and loss and longing, offers it his life and everything he has, everything he is, everything he possibly has to give and more. One last impossible miracle. Just one. His life for two. His wish. His purpose. 

For the first time in a hundred years, the Exarch remembers how to sing in his own crystal-clear voice, all artifice, all disguise, falling away, every ounce of his love for both of them poured into every note, his love and the collective wish of everyone whose efforts had brought him here, the generations who hadn't lived to see their efforts bear fruit, all those who had sent him back at the cost of their own lives, their own timeline, for the sake of saving the world. And hopes beyond hope that the boy still sleeping in the Tower on the Source will never have to sing like this.

_In exchange for the sacrifice of my body, I will offer this song_

_To protect you, precious ones..._

Thya'a - silent, Light-addled, in agony - jerks his head up at the first notes, even before the Tower responds, spectrally echoing back his voice off the walls here, coughing up even more pure light as his expression cracks in distress. That's right, the Exarch half-hazily remembers from brief glances in his mirrors, his focus more on the song, Thya'a had refused to acknowledge any discussion of his identity. Steadfastly buried his head in the sand, so to speak, argued with Sarangerel when she'd tried to talk to him about it, even as his own efforts to hide his identity slowly crumbled around the edges. Until now. "You idiot," he hisses, sounding like he is trying not to cry, "You _fucking idiot,"_ Between him and Sarangerel, Thya'a is the more likely to actually _understand_ enough Allagan to roughly know what he's singing. The Exarch taught him himself, curled up in a too-small tent with him and Sarangerel, a lifetime ago. 

He wants just a little longer, with the two of them. Just a little. But there is no time left and all he has is the rest of this song, before he throws himself and the Tower into the void between worlds, to die. _(Will his heart freeze first, or will his bones crack from too much light first?)_ Beneath the shadow of his cowl, he thinks he might manage not to break down, even a little - until the hood is blown off, revealing his face, though his undisguised voice had already given him away. Manages to keep singing, through his tears, when the two of them call his name, together, a name he hasn't heard in over a century. For the first and last time. 

_(That is all he will ever have - and that, alone, is more than enough, beyond simply knowing that the two he loves most in this world are safe, and alive, and both their worlds are saved. He will take the memory with him into the void, hold it close, and die cherishing it)_

The Crystal Exarch - _G'raha Tia- _doesn't hear the gunshot, not with the song and the Tower's echo in his ears and he's already dizzy and in pain and half-outside his own body, almost doesn't recognize anything is wrong until he tries to sing the final line and no words come out. Doesn't entirely understand what's happened, what's happening, desperately trying to finish it, trying to desperately sing the last words, doesn't understand why he can't sing, there's blood in his lungs and he's still trying, no, he has to do this, please, please, please, lips moving soundlessly until he collapses, a doll with its strings cut. 

_For your sake, I will be happy to become a song - _


End file.
